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Raiders! The True Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

As I’ve mentioned before, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is my favorite film of all time, so there was no question about whether I was going to track down this documentary about the legendary fan remake of it.

I first heard about “Raiders: The Adaptation” when I was following coverage of Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival in 2002. Knowles, the “Head Geek” over at Ain’t It Cool News, played this film in the end of his 24-hour film festival; he’d received a bootleg copy of it from director Eli Roth. The film — a shot-for-shot retelling of Spielberg’s classic, made over several years by a group of friends — wowed the audience and became a legend in film circles, spawning nationwide screenings of the adaptation, a book, and even an audience with Spielberg.

The best moments in Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen’s documentary simply revisit the making of this film in the 1980s, when young Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb pooled all their resources and time into shooting the film (often from memory, given that this much of it was before the film’s release on VHS). This isn’t a bunch of kids goofing around in the backyard, though. The adaptation is surprisingly inventive, and a great deal of childhood ingenuity went into re-creating the film’s iconic moments, from its breathtaking encounter with a giant boulder, to the unforgettable truck chase, and through a shoot-out in a flaming bar (the story of them dousing a friend in gasoline is both hilarious and panic-inducing for parents). Watching the scenes and hearing the stories, the film is an ode to adolescent creativity and, given the home situations of the young boys, the way art and friendship help kids cope when growing up.

Less effective is a modern-day framing device, in which the guys (now grown, obviously) use Kickstarter funds to film the scene that got away — Indy’s fight with a Nazi guard under the wings of a massive bomber. But their use of thousands of dollars to recreate the scene goes against their childhood ethos of filming this on allowance money and homemade props, and the petty squabble that erupt, the threats of losing work to follow this passion, and the blatant feeling that the guys are trying to jump-start a film career off this kind of curdle the goodwill of the beginning.

Still, if you’re an Indiana Jones fan or just a fan of film, this is a great story just for the childhood angle. The adult stuff lacks the magic; but then again, maybe that’s part of the point.

:Raiders! The True Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made” is currently available on Netflix.